Turns out there is life before morning coffee

You may feel like you deserve a gold star if you manage to shower and brush your teeth before breakfast, but the most successful people tend to get a lot more done by 9 a.m., says time-management expert Laura Vanderkam in her new book What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. Most go-getters exercise, meditate, work, and make breakfast for their family early in the morning. What’s their secret? Apparently being productive early builds momentum and also allows you to get stuff done before the day’s interruptions intrude.

Forget performance-enhancing drugs to boost athletic skills; juicing can get results without that whole illegal factor. Two faves of athletes? Beetroot juice and tart cherry juice. Beetroot juice has been linked to more speed and power in bicycling, is commonly used among track and field athletes, and seems to improve blood and oxygen flow. Cherry juice, while not a performance enhancer, helps the body recover from hard exertion due to its anti-inflammatory properties.

Sure, all is well once the Novocain kicks in, but before? Agony. But dental drama may get easier with new technology called the Dental Vibe, which sends (good) vibrations along a patient’s gums during injections. The vibrations travel to the brain faster than pain signals do, eliminating any discomfort. If only it would pick up your dental bill—then going to the dentist would be positively joyous.

Australian researchers have discovered one more reason to keep ginger in your kitchen: Not only does it ease pain and improve digestion; it may help manage blood glucose levels. The gingerol compounds from an Australian ginger increased the uptake of glucose into cells without insulin and therefore decreased blood glucose levels, a process that can present a major problem for diabetics.

Stressed people actually use their brains differently when learning than relaxed folks, finds new research. While unstressed people use a simple strategy to solve a problem, those under pressure choose more complex brain routes to work out the same problem. While the brain route choice is unconscious, researchers say the process interferes with conscious, purposeful learning.

Of course not, most parents would answer, aghast at the thought of choosing a favorite offspring. And the same response typically holds true for owners of multiple pets. But here’s the thing, animal experts point out: Pets aren’t human children, they’re animals, which means they’re generally the ones who set the terms of how much attention and affection they get. And if you think about it, pets are the ones who pick their favorite human, not the other way around (not that you hold a grudge about how Captain Cricket—the cat you adopted—laid eyes on your husband and hasn’t given you the time of day since).